


Do We Need a Rabbit (?)

by Waldo



Series: The Human Body [7]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Cheating, Episode Related, Episode Tag, Episode: s02e15 The Tower, Established Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-12-25
Updated: 2005-12-25
Packaged: 2017-10-06 14:16:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/54579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Waldo/pseuds/Waldo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Once is a mistake, twice is a pattern." Carson knows.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Do We Need a Rabbit (?)

Sheppard and his team sat two apiece on facing biobeds. Carson was a little surly as he went through the standard post-mission exam, clearing and dismissing Ronon and Teyla quickly. To appease Rodney, he had a nurse give him a nebulizer treatment when he kept insisting that he'd inhaled at least eight pounds of dust during the earthquakes.

As the nurse escorted Rodney off, Carson stood in front of John, "Roll up your sleeve, please, Colonel."

John made a face. There hadn't been any reason to think they were exposed to anything and none of his other teammates had been required to pony up a blood sample before being released. He made a face, but pulled his jacket off and offered Carson his left elbow. "What's this about?"

Carson didn't even try to disguise his sigh as he held up the needle where he was sure John would see it. "Testing for any intergalactic STDs you may have picked up from your lovely new girlfriend."

John was damn near certain that Carson jabbed him in one side of his arm and straight out the other. He bit his lip and refused to give Carson the satisfaction of hearing him scream or swear. He almost slipped when Carson shoved a piece of gauze over the hole and pushed John's hand up to his shoulder roughly. "Hold this here a minute, if you please."

John pulled his feet up onto the bed and leaned back against the wall as Carson disappeared into his lab with the vial of blood. He supposed Carson had a right to be pissed. But he'd be damned if they were having this conversation in the infirmary while adrenaline still sang through their systems making them tired and touchy. Which, in Carson's case, presented as being overly polite and formal. John knew that they needed to talk, and that he'd probably have to goad Carson into giving him the hell he deserved so they could move past it. Because he refused to believe they'd never get past it.

&lt;{*}&gt;

John was amazed that Carson showed up at his door later that night. He'd planned on giving them the night to cool off and get some rest before trying to talk through what an idiot he'd been. But Carson was there and his arms were folded across his chest his fingers clutching and releasing the sleeves of the lab coat he still wore. There was clearly no putting it off.

John waved him in but remained standing, letting Carson say whatever he needed to, prepared for whatever repercussions a moment of letting his hormones get the better of him would earn him.

Carson stood just far enough inside to let the door close behind him, but once in the room, faced with John, he wasn't sure what he intended to say.

Taking pity on him, John gave him an opening gambit, hoping a little _mea culpa_ and a little humility might spare him a lot of grief. "I'm sorry?"

"For what, exactly?" Carson countered, his accent incredibly thick as it had a tendency to be when he was stressed.

John stomped on the first thing that came to mind – letting myself get molested by a hot blonde and enjoying it. Snarky wasn't going to trump pissed and he really didn't want to mess up a good thing. And he and Carson had had a good thing. He hoped that just possibly, they still did.

So he went for contrite with a little bit of groveling. "For possibly letting ten minutes of stupidity ruin a really good thing." John cheered inwardly when he saw some of the lines leave Carson's face, but he was careful not to let it show. "I'm sorry. I know that's not going to undo it, but I am."

Carson let one hand drop into the pocket of his lab coat. "Would you have told me if I hadn't figured it out?"

John dropped on to the bed, waving in the general direction of the foot of the bed and the nearby chair, letting Carson decide how close he felt like being. He didn't have an answer to Carson's question. Things had moved so fast down there that he hadn't really had time to decide what, if anything, Carson needed to know about his indiscretion. Their relationship had moved so slowly that there had never been any discussion of what they were to each other or if they were officially… anything. But they'd been sleeping together in every sense of the word for several months, so it wasn't surprising that Carson had blown a gasket when he'd read between the lines of the interchange between him and Mara when she'd brought his radio to the cell. Rodney making more Captain Kirk references on their way back to the stargate certainly hadn't helped things at all.

John tucked his stocking feet under the edge of the blanket that was scrunched at the bottom of the bed from where he'd left it unmade the morning before he'd left. "I'd like to say that I'm man enough to say that I would have, but honestly… I hadn't thought that far ahead."

Carson nodded and dropped into the chair at the end of the bed. John didn't miss the wince as Carson leaned back against the hard back of the chair. He seemed to be thinking through what John had said. After several long minutes he wiped his face with his right hand, his left still resting in the crook of his right elbow, holding on to the fabric of the lab coat. "Am I out of line? We never said…" he finally asked quietly.

John canted his head and considered the question. He was sure Carson was thinking the same thing he had been earlier. There had been no promises, no commitments; just unspoken understandings. "Did we make promises to each other? No. Was there an understanding between us? I thought there was. I hope there was. And do I understand that if we're operating under those assumptions that what I did was massively stupid? Yeah, I do." A random thought ran through his head and he had to look up at the ceiling and bite his lip to keep from smiling. He wasn't sure if Carson would understand what the smile was about. His face fell as he realized that he may no longer have a reason to smile.

"What was that?" Carson asked as John's face contorted.

"Just a… kind of a stupid thought… I'm a little… flattered, a little glad, that you're jealous."

Carson's carefully neutral face finally fell and he cracked a slight smile. "Smug bastard."

"You're not pissed?" John asked hopefully.

"Oh, aye, I'm pissed, but I suppose I'll let you make it up to me."

John let his head thunk back against the wall behind him as he thanked whatever lucky stars were smiling down on stupid bastards like him. "I will," he promised, still looking at the ceiling. When he looked down again, Carson was shifting against the back of the chair, like leaning back was uncomfortable, but he was too tired to remain sitting upright. "What's wrong with your back?"

"It's nothing," Carson said, shifting again.

John noticed that the entire time he'd been there, Carson's left hand had been in the same place – resting in the bend of his right elbow. "One of your team give you a going over?" John asked, trying not to nag, but knowing that if anyone could, Carson would be able to duck out of a medical exam and get away with it.

"Of course," Carson said quickly, not adding anything.

"Carson…" John warned.

Carson sighed. "It's my shoulder. That bastard constable wrenched it when he pulled that knife on me. I did have someone look at it. It's just going to be sore for a few days, but nothing's seriously damaged."

John nodded and patted the bed in front of him. "C'mere." He put on his best puppy-dog face and hoped Carson would comply. When Carson didn't move after a moment, John wiped the pout off his face and appealed to him again through logic. "What do you need to do for it?" he asked indicating the sore shoulder. He knew the answer, but he wanted to see if Carson would actually give him the opening he wanted or if he'd have to work for it.

"It's not so bad as all that, honestly. Some pain relievers, heat, that sort of thing. It's okay," Carson reassured.

"Massage?" John asked hopefully.

Carson smiled at John's desire to start making it up to him so soon. He stood up and carefully lowered himself onto the edge of the bed. "I suppose. If you're careful. I really am quite sore." He knew he was contradicting what he'd said just a moment before about it being not so bad, but he figured he might as well work the situation while he could. And, well, it did hurt. If John was going to put his hands on it, he'd find out rather quickly that Carson had lied just by squeezing a little.

John nodded. "I promise to be gentle. Take your shoes off and sit up here with me."

Once Carson had complied, John carefully pulled off the lab coat and tossed it onto the end of the bed. He slid up behind Carson, his legs spread and Carson seated between them. He gently rubbed the flat of his hand over Carson's sore shoulder, just letting his skin and the slight friction warm Carson's skin and muscles through the dark gray t-shirt, letting him feel where the muscles were bunched and hard from the rough handling earlier that day.

He rested his forehead against the back of Carson's neck. "I'm glad you weren't seriously hurt today," he whispered against his skin.

"When I realized that the knife that Ortho fellow pulled on you was poisoned, and that even a minor wound would have killed you as easily as it killed him - and long before I could have done anything about it…" Carson trailed off and hung his head. "I'm very glad you weren't hurt either."

John began applying gentle pressure to the sore muscles with the heel of his hand. He hoped that the issue of him and Mara was put behind them, but he needed to be sure. "I didn't mean to hurt you either."

"I know," Carson responded after a moment. A long enough moment that John knew that Carson actually meant it and wasn't just saying it to appease John's conscience. John did note; however, that Carson didn't say 'you didn't.' And that spoke more loudly than anything.

He pulled Carson back against him, one hand still working gently on his sore shoulder, the other wrapping around Carson's waist, "I wish I could make it not have happened. I mean, it wasn't like I made a decision to… She was there and then she was naked and pushing me back on the bed… I'm not saying she assaulted me, or that I couldn't have stopped her if I'd … tried. It wasn't like that. But it happened so fast that it was over before I had a chance to really understand what was happening."

"You didn't understand what it meant when a naked girl climbed all over you?" Carson asked incredulously.

"Well, no, I understood what she… I'm just saying it's not like this was… premeditated." He wondered if he was making things better or worse.

"I know," Carson said again. "I would have kicked your arse if you had tried, even in the slightest, to lie to me about any of this. But I don't think you've ever deliberately set out to hurt someone in your life." He rolled his eyes as the thought occurred to him, "Including that girl… and I suppose it's a little difficult to tell a woman that you aren't interested when she's standing there naked as the day she was born without making it sound like she's undesirable." Carson shifted to the side so he could look John in the eye when he said soberly, "But I'll tell you this: once is an accident; twice is a pattern. I can forgive an accident."

John nodded, knowing that they had finally breached the bubble he'd been trying to pop all night. He knew Carson wasn't going to let him off without at least something of a lecture or a warning. "Understood." John kissed his neck softly and went back to massaging his shoulder.

There were a few quiet moments before Carson asked quietly, amusement in his voice, "Only ten minutes of stupidity, eh?"

John blushed a little and he felt a low chuckle in his belly that didn't quite make a sound when it escaped. "On the outside. She was… quite the whirlwind. She was much more interested in my genes than my… technique. It was kind of an end-product oriented process."

"Her loss," Carson commented. "Should I be going back in a few weeks with a rabbit?" Carson asked, hoping John would get the outdated reference.

"Don't think it hasn't crossed my mind. It's… possible. I mean I… when she… and unless you know something about there being something wrong with my reproductive abilities that I don't…" John buried his face in Carson's shoulder. He would have preferred that this part of the conversation waited. Or never come up at all. Mara had wanted his DNA. The fact that she found him an interesting person was just a bonus. And now, with the royal bloodline being useless, he wasn't sure she'd want any kind of child at all. That didn't mean there wouldn't be one.

Carson turned and took John's arm, leading them both to lie side by side. After they sorted their legs out and made sure Carson wasn't lying on his sore shoulder, Carson said seriously, "We'll need to go back soon to make sure they've settled themselves out now that their Lord Protector is dead and gone and that they've got to rearrange their whole government. I can go with your team to set up the villagers with the medicines you promised and while we're there I can run a few discreet tests. You'll sleep better when you're sure you aren't going to be getting any surprises in nine months."

John pulled him in for a kiss. "Thank you. I know you'd very much like to pretend that none of this ever happened."

Carson stroked his cheek. "Aye, I would. But if I've learned anything from my time in the Pegasus Galaxy it's that nothing goes away just by wishing it so. Just promise me that the next time some beautiful, young lass requires your genes to keep her lineage in tact, you'll let me do it with a test tube and a glorified turkey baster."

"A turkey baster?" John shuddered. "That's disgusting!"

"Where did you think test tube babies came from?" Carson asked as he rolled John over and leaned across his chest, his weight on his good arm.

"Uh… test tubes?" John tried.

"That's where they start. Not where they end. They still require a mother to incubate them."

John made a face, "There really are downsides to being involved with a geneticist," he told Carson before kissing him and wrapping both arms around him and rolling so that they switched positions. "They know far too much about bizarre reproductive habits."

Deliberately twisting John's words Carson grinned up at him. "Oh, usually you're the one hoping we can try some of the more 'bizarre reproductive' things you've read about."

"We're not trying to reproduce. We're just trying to have a little fun," John countered.

Carson grinned and raised an eyebrow. "And usually we're quite successful at that."

"Only usually?" John asked as he began to kiss a line from behind Carson's ear down his neck.

Conversation became greatly overrated at that point as John proceeded to push Carson's gray uniform shirt up as high as he could get it and continued kissing his way down. When Carson's pants got in the way, John gave up. "This isn't working," he complained, letting his forehead rest on Carson's belly. "You're in far too many clothes."

Carson pulled his head and shoulders up - demonstrating what John had known for a while, Carson had stronger abs than most of the marines on base - and pulled his shirt over his head. With a wicked grin he looked down and said, "You're in a better position to do something about the rest of it than I am."

John smiled and knelt next to Carson, attacking the button and zipper with a vengeance. Once he'd gotten Carson's pants open, John lay back down, wrapping his arms around Carson's legs and blowing a stream of hot air through the cotton of Carson's shorts. Carson moaned and arched and John smiled as an idea hit him.

He slid his hands under Carson, his fingers gently squeezing Carson's ass through his pants while he slid his tongue through the fly of Carson's boxers. One of Carson's hands flew down to grasp John's hair, neither pushing him down nor pulling him away, just holding on.

"How long has it been since you've come in your pants like a teenager?" John asked with an evil lilt in his voice. He liked the idea of Carson having to get up in the morning and go commando when he went back to his quarters to change, because his underwear were to sticky to put back on.

"Since that time we stumbled in here after making each other completely mad at that Athosian celebration and neither one of us managed to get out of our clothes fast enough. What was that? Three weeks ago?"

John smiled, remembering that night. During the planting ceremony the Athosians had put great emphasis on the land as mother where the seeds entered her womb and the traditional prayers and gestures were fraught with sexual metaphors. He and Carson had sent each other little glances and had found excuses to accidentally brush against each other all night long. When they'd finally made it back to the sanctity of John's quarters they'd simply leaned against the locked door and dry humped for about thirty seconds before it had all been over. For the first time that night.

But if Carson could still string together enough words to talk about that night, John figured he wasn't working hard enough. He wiggled Carson's pants down far enough that he could slide one hand up the loose leg of Carson's boxers and gently trace light lines over Carson's scrotom, while his tongue continued to explore all he could through the slit in the fabric. He could feel Carson go from soft and lax to stiff and hot as he worked. The repeatedly muttered "Good god" and "Oh yes" told him that something about not just stripping down and going to it was working for Carson too.

John pulled back for a second, rearranging them both so that Carson's legs were still trapped by his pants, but then further immobilizing him by laying over his legs and wrapping his arms around his hips to keep him still. Once he had him where he wanted him, John began gently teething Carson's erection right through the cotton, his hands up the back of Carson's boxers again massing his ass as he blew him through his shorts.

Carson panted and wiggled as much as he could, biting his lip to keep him from demanding that John rip the damn clothes out of the way and suck him properly. He'd learned long ago that if he asked for something he'd get it, no questions asked. But more recently he'd learned that if he was patient and let John be inventive, that John was very, very creative.

So he limited his words to general expressions of approval and vague pleas for 'more', but he let John decide how to give it to him.

His balls were beginning to draw up even as John tugged them down first with his fingers and then with his mouth once he'd shoved the leg of Carson's shorts up high enough to give him access. And then John put his mouth over the tip of Carson's cock through the fabric and sucked hard. The increased friction of the wet fabric over his sensitive skin was too much and Carson came hard, gasping and clutching at John's hair.

When he could breathe again, when he had the strength to open his eyes, Carson tugged on John's arm to get him to move up the bed and lay alongside him. "And what do you want?" he asked, even as his eyes slipped half-closed in both sation and exhaustion.

John took Carson's hand and kissed his fingers before lowering it down to his own ruined clothes. "Little late for that," he laughed. Carson noticed that John's fly was undone and that the end of John's black t-shirt, his own shorts and his pants all had wet spots.

Carson laughed and then kissed him. He felt a slight jerk of interest in his own cock as he thought about John stroking himself while he sucked him off, but he was too tired to really respond to the idea that night. So he filed it away for another time. A time where he'd work up the nerve to ask John to do that for him while he sat up and watched. His head fell back to the pillow with a silent thunk as that idea took hold in his mind. Maybe after they'd both gotten a few hours of sleep.

Carson had always loved how highly tactile John was. John was always touching people, casually, just being friendly. It had never made Carson jealous before, but after the events on the past few days, he wondered if it wouldn't be a problem now. He cut that thought off. He wasn't going to start mistrusting John now. He'd been honest about what he'd done and promised that it wouldn't happen again. And Carson needed to believe he wouldn't. He couldn't imagine not having this as a part of his life now that he'd gotten used to it. Now John was tracing the features of his face with his fingertips. Mapping, memorizing. Carson closed his eyes and just enjoyed the gentle attention. After a few minutes John rolled away, flopping onto his back. "We really might want to think about getting undressed now."

Carson nodded, noting for the first time that he was still tangled up in his pants and that his boxers were completely destroyed. "I suppose we should," he answered but made no hasty move to actually do anything about it.

After another long pause, John finally sat up and pulled off his black t-shirt, his dogtags getting tangled in the process. Carson laughed at how long it took John to sort himself out enough to be able to pull off his pants and socks. It was a testament to how sex-fried his brain was that he couldn't complete such common physical tasks without trouble. He took some pride in the fact that he hadn't actually had to do anything to put John in such a state. He was also beyond grateful that his little blonde princess had apparently been unable to do so even as aggressive as she'd been.

Once he was undressed, John told Carson to raise his hips so that John could pull the rest of his clothes off and toss them on the floor in the heap with his. When he crawled back up, he pulled the blankets over them. It had been a long couple days capped off with some really fantastic sex. He was fading fast. As Carson turned his back to him and snuggled back against his chest, John had an odd thought. "So, I'm guessing that since you didn't come down here armed with condoms, there were no intergalactic STDs?"

Carson chuckled, and tucked John's arm tighter around his chest. "No. I didn't actually expect there to be any. I just wanted to see if you'd deny that there was a reason to run the tests."

John buried his face in Carson's shoulder. "Sneaky bastard."

Carson turned his head enough to kiss him lightly. "Damn right."

**Author's Note:**

> About the title: For those who are too young to remember, they used to conduct pregnancy tests using female rabbits. Now, regardless of outcome, the rabbit died in the process of determining the state of a woman's pregnancy, but it was generally thought that the rabbit died if a woman *was* pregnant. A common - if crude - way to ask a woman if she was pregnant was to ask if the rabbit died. Now, if you're reading this, but haven't read the story... it is not an M-Preg fic. Not that there's anything wrong with those, but they aren't my kettle of tea. I'm just sayin'....


End file.
